A sunday morning drive

Yesterday morning my family decided to visit an ancient temple about 40 kms from Chennai.

We left early in the morning so that we could enjoy the drive and assumed that the traffic would not be too much either, it being a Sunday.

But we were in for a surprise..

There was maddening traffic at 6 AM in fact I’d have needed some re assurance that it was indeed a Sunday. People breaking red signals.. the apparent reasoning always given to me is “duh..its 6 in the morning.. who bothers about traffic light then ;)”

Well well, text book knowledge always taught me what the little red ,green and amber lights meant. ;) but “me” is a minority in this big bad world of driving ;)

The next breaker for our wonderful journey was the flyover construction work that’s happening on one of the busiest junctions in Chennai. Every person is eagerly waiting for the flyover to be constructed. I’ve even drawn lovely images on my mind of how those roads will be once the flyovers are finished.

Some flyovers in Delhi have given me that “lasting impression” feel.. All that have come up in the past 4 or 5 years have completely changed the face of the city. Am hoping Chennai Kathipara flyover is as state of art once its through

Anyways after the bumpy ride through the construction site and more bumpy rides through the “not so much of a city” roads beyond the airport, we finally reached a stretch of nice peaceful drive. So peaceful, that, I managed to doze off for a couple of minutes.

After almost an hour we passed a “suburb” (if I may call it that) of Chennai , Tambaram.

I realized only then that several of my friends travel almost daily to Tambaram through the very same roads I just traveled by and not at an early hour of 6 but at peak “office hours”

In fact one of my colleagues’ has traveled for every day of 3 years of his training from a town further away ,almost near the temple I went to visit , using variety of transport being buses , trains and auto rickshaws.

But on reaching this small village where the temple was, my spirits rose. Old houses, the smell of pure mud, little green hillocks. It was divine. It washed off all the weariness the drive had brought about.

A simple ancient temple. One could feel the ancient history in the walls , the floor, the architecture. Everything about the temple spelt “history” .

Close by was another old temple which was our next stop. Atop a hillock it was beautiful too.

After sitting and enjoying the peace these temples spelt out we got back into the car for out “bumpy” slow ride back home

Back through the same traffic and same thoughts ,with more appreciation to all those who do the journey everyday.